[nelson]

Hello,
I'm buying a stored energy TIG welder. It has a handpiece with tungsten which auto retracts when you hit the footswitch. It uses argon as well. You put the filler on the area to build up, and the tungsten is touched to the top of that then hit the switch. This has a pulse width setting. I'm sure you can't stretch the pulse beyond a few milliseconds.

If anyone has experience, can I use this for aluminum?

These are used a lot for jewelry. Aluminum is another story.

[MotoEngineering]

Hi I've been TIG welding Aluminium a long time but I'm not sure exactly sure what your asking or what you are trying to do.
In order to TIG weld Aluminium you must have an AC/DC welder it must be set to AC. Argon gas is used, it sounds like you have a scratch start TIG does it have an AC setting? Pulse is used to do thin materials but it is possible to weld down to 35 thou without pulse. I hope this helps but if you have more more specific questions let me know.

Regards Bert

[Oilman]

Sounds like the description of an induction spot welder......sort of. If this is the case it will not work for aluminum. We did spot weld some aluminized steel in the auto industry. Basically the aluminum coating was burned off by the weld and we were fusing the steel underneath. Kind of nasty with aluminum oxides forming on the welder tips.

Spot welding is also known as resistance welding. So the resistance of the steel causes heat buildup from the current passing through and melts the steel together. Aluminum does not have all that much resistance to it would take tremendous amounts of current density to cause fusion.

Ford's new aluminum trucks are riveted together, not spot welded.

[Rick_H]

Sounds like the description of an induction spot welder......sort of. If this is the case it will not work for aluminum. We did spot weld some aluminized steel in the auto industry. Basically the aluminum coating was burned off by the weld and we were fusing the steel underneath. Kind of nasty with aluminum oxides forming on the welder tips.

Spot welding is also known as resistance welding. So the resistance of the steel causes heat buildup from the current passing through and melts the steel together. Aluminum does not have all that much resistance to it would take tremendous amounts of current density to cause fusion.

Ford's new aluminum trucks are riveted together, not spot welded.

Not ideal but check this out, I was a non believer till I tired it on our big old 480 based machine at work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcgC3V3mkcw

[clavius]

I suspect the OP means something similar to this:

http://www.lampert.info/en/products/jew ... goldsmiths

Sort of like a combination of TIG and spot welding, pretty specialized. No direct insight if it would work for aluminum, but I suppose it will if used within the capacity of your particular unit. It would seem that if the pulse is hot enough to melt the metal, it's hot enough to melt the metal, so it will fuse. Just a guess on my part though.

[nelson]

That's it Clavius. It comes EP and I can't change that easily.
A 20 millisecond pulse though I don't think will have time to "clean" anything so I'll go with it and report back. I'll have it friday.
It's mostly for steel molds but we have some aluminum prototype molds with 1,000,000 cycles hence my question.

Nice trick for spot welding aluminum, good post Rick.

[entity-unknown]

Good thing they didn't add an E to the end of the product name! The product info page says it will do anything TIG can do:

In addition to many precious metal alloys such as gold, silver and platinum, many non-ferrous metals such as copper and tin alloys, many steels, titanium and aluminium alloys are suitable for welding. All alloys suitable for laser or TIG welding can also be welded with the PUK 5.

I see the device is USB operated. In my and many others experience, operating a 3d printer that requires a constant feed of G-Code with no delay, you might find the USB can screw you. USB is a major bottleneck so if you're creating any stored procedures such as G-Code, then load it to the device if you can. A simple update check on your host computer can be enough to stop the USB process and then things are over.

Holy crap 400Amps but only 9A minimum? Still this is a fancy machine! The GUI looks totally dumbed down though and let's you think in percentages vs. actual values which will be challenging.
And they came up with their own term, WIG to replace TIG....

You should take some video of this fancy lil toy in action for some of us to scoff at and the rest to increase our jealousy

[nelson]

Sorry, I meant Clavius got the right process, not brand or model. I am buying an ancient used device which works on the same principle. Retracting electrode thing. I guess argon pressure or a solenoid retract the tungsten and the circuit detects the open and fires the stored charge.

[nelson]

E-U...400 amps sounds like a lot but only for a fraction of a second. A more realistic ratings is watt-seconds but I didn't see that listed on the page. I could have searched for it but that should be in big numbers on the first page.

[Arno]

And they came up with their own term, WIG to replace TIG....

Nope.. 'WIG' is the official German abbreviation for 'Wolfram-Inertgasschweißen', meaning 'Tungsten Inert Gas Welding'

And as this is a german company/product thay use their official term for the process

Bye, Arno.

[Coldman]

And wolfram also means dog poop


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nelson]

I got it. It's defective. Electrode is live all the time instead of waiting for the footpedal.

It's got 15 TO-220 scr's with the chip ID's painted over....love it! They're probably all blown.

So I gotta ship this back....and I've got nothing to report.